Then she broke into laughter again, quivering from head to foot, repeating and singing her age.  She laughed at her sixteen years with a fine-drawn laugh that flowed on with rhythmic trilling like a streamlet.  Serge scanned her closely, amazed at the laughing life that transfigured her face.  He scarcely knew her now with those dimples in her cheeks, those bow-shaped lips between which peeped the rosy moistness of her mouth, and those eyes blue like bits of sky kindling with the rising of the sun.  As she threw back her head, she sent a glow of warmth through him.

He put out his hand, and fumbled mechanically behind her neck.

‘What do you want?’ she asked.  And suddenly remembering, she exclaimed:  ‘My comb! my comb! that’s it.’

She gave him her comb, and let fall her heavy tresses.  A cloth of gold suddenly unrolled and clothed her to her hips.  Some locks which flowed down upon her breast gave, as it were a finishing touch to her regal raiment.  At the sight of that sudden blaze, Serge uttered an exclamation; he kissed each lock, and burned his lips amidst that sunset-like refulgence.

But Albine now relieved herself of her long silence, and chatted and questioned unceasingly.

’Oh, how wretched you made me!  You no longer took any notice of me, and day after day I found myself useless and powerless, worried out of my wits like a good-for-nothing. . . .  And yet the first few days I had done you good.  You saw me and spoke to me. . . .  Do you remember when you were lying down, and went to sleep on my shoulder, and murmured that I did you good?’

‘No!’ said Serge, ’no, I don’t remember it.  I had never seen you before.  I have only just seen you for the first time—­lovely, radiant, never to be forgotten.’

She clapped her hands impatiently, exclaiming:  ’And my comb?  You must remember how I used to give you my comb to keep you quiet when you were a little child?  Why, you were looking for it just now.’

’No, I don’t remember.  Your hair is like fine silk.  I have never kissed your hair before.’

At this, with some vexation, she recounted certain particulars of his convalescence in the room with the blue ceiling.  But he only laughed at her, and at last closed her lips with his hand, saying with anxious weariness:  ’No, be quiet, I don’t know; I don’t want to know any more. . . .  I have only just woke up, and found you there, covered with roses.  That is enough.’

And he drew her once more towards him and held her there, dreaming aloud, and murmuring:  ’Perhaps I have lived before.  It must have been a long, long time ago. . . .  I loved you in a painful dream.  You had the same blue eyes, the same rather long face, the same youthful mien.  But your hair was carefully hidden under a linen cloth, and I never dared to remove that cloth, because your locks seemed to me fearsome and would have made me die.  But to-day your hair is the very sweetness of yourself.  It preserves your scent, and when I kiss it, when I bury my face in it like this, I drink in your very life.’